Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Two new polls, two stories

To inaugurate a new sitting of Parliament, polls by Nanos Research and Harris-Decima were released to a curious public. Depending on how one might want to spin the results, there is something for everyone in these polls - not something you want to see when searching for consistency in polling data.

Harris-Decima's last public poll was conducted between June 7-18 and since then the Conservatives picked up three points to lead with 34%. The New Democrats were down five points to 27%, transforming a one-point edge into a seven-point deficit.

The Liberals were up one point to 24%, while the Greens were unchanged at 7% support.

This is a change of fortunes for the New Democrats. They have not trailed the Conservatives by seven points since Thomas Mulcair became leader of the party at the end of March. The shifts in support for the Tories and the NDP since June are statistically significant, as are the shifts in Ontario. There, the Conservatives were up six points to 39% while the New Democrats dropped nine points to 23%, putting them well behind the Liberals, unchanged at 29%. If that is a true depiction of what is going on in Ontario, the New Democrats are in a lot of trouble.

Shifts elsewhere were within the margin of error. The New Democrats led in Quebec with 31% (-5), followed by the Bloc Québécois at 25% (+4) and the Liberals at 24% (+5). The Tories and NDP were tied in British Columbia with 33% apiece, while the Conservatives led in Alberta and the Prairies. Atlantic Canada is a close race between the New Democrats and the Liberals.

In terms of seats, these numbers would deliver 152 to the Conservatives on the proposed boundaries of the new 338-seat electoral map. The New Democrats would win 96, the Liberals 74, the Bloc 15 (official party status returns) and the Greens one.

The poor showing of the NDP in Ontario is the primary problem for the party in this poll, while their weaker numbers in Quebec open up a swathe of seats to the Liberals and Bloc Québécois. But this poll puts the Conservatives in minority territory, which could be enough to end their time in government. The New Democrats and Liberals could combine for 170 seats, just above the half-way mark.

While the Harris-Decima poll points to a wide Conservative lead, the Nanos poll suggests that the Tories and NDP remain in a neck-and-neck contest.

Nanos was last in the field July 7-12, and since then the Conservatives slipped 1.2 points to 32.4% support. The New Democrats were up 0.1 point to 30.4%, while the Liberals were down 1.9 points to 24.6%.

That Conservative edge is statistically insignificant, and none of the shifts in support suggest any real movement. Status quo, in other words, rather than the changing landscape of the Harris-Decima poll.

No shifts of consequence happened at the regional level, the Conservatives ahead with 35.4% in Ontario (-1.4). They were closely followed by the NDP at 32.6% (+7) and the Liberals with 26.3% (-5). In Quebec, the NDP slipped 5.1 points to 33.7% and were trailed by the Liberals at 24% (-1) and the Bloc at 20.5% (+3.3). And in British Columbia, the Tories had the edge with 34.3% support (-6.1) to 31.1% for the NDP (-3.2) and 21% for the Liberals (+1.5).

The only lead of statistical significance in this poll was in the Prairies, which includes Alberta in Nanos's reckoning. That makes it somewhat more difficult to estimate how to distribute support across the three provinces included in the Prairies.

But with Nanos's numbers the Conservatives would win 148 seats to 114 for the New Democrats and 72 for the Liberals. The Bloc Québécois would win only three seats and the Greens just one.

The difference maker for the NDP in this poll is Ontario and Quebec. While this poll does not give a lot more support to the NDP in Quebec than Harris-Decima does, the poorer showing for the Bloc leaves a lot of Quebec seats in the NDP's hands. The Liberals still manage to take a good chunk. Here again, the Conservatives are in minority territory and outnumbered (186) by the NDP and Liberal opposition.

Nanos includes personal ratings for all of the leaders, and the numbers were quite good for Stephen Harper. Despite his party slipping marginally nationwide, his own numbers were up by five points to 28% on "vision for Canada", six points to 29% on trust, and 10 points to 37% on competence. That gave him an overall score of 93.4 points on Nanos's Leadership Index (just the sum total of the percentages on the three qualities), a gain of 20.7 points.

Thomas Mulcair was up 1.2 points to 48 on the Leadership Index, picking up two points on trust (18%), holding steady on competence (13%), but losing one point on vision (17%).

Bob Rae was down 3.4 points on the index to 38.1, and was followed by Elizabeth May at 21.1 (+5.7) and Daniel Paillé at 10.1 (+3.1).

Paillé's numbers in Quebec are problematic for the Bloc Québécois. He trails Harper, Mulcair, and Rae on all three qualities by significant margins. Only 6% of Quebecers consider him the most trustworthy and only 3% think he is the most competent and has the best vision. Mulcair, by contrast, managed 40%, 30%, and 35% on those three factors. What this suggests is that Daniel Paillé is either a complete unknown or a drag on the Bloc's numbers (considering his low visibility, 'unknown' is a safer bet). Gilles Duceppe always did much better in these Nanos polls, and if the Bloc can't improve its leader's reputation they will have no chance of growing beyond their current base.

These two polls tell different stories. Harris-Decima puts the Conservatives firmly in the driver's seat, while Nanos shows the same close race between the two main parties. Conservatives can delight in the seven point lead or the improving personal numbers for their leader. New Democrats can point to their continued resilience in Nanos's poll, while Liberals can rejoice that they are at 24% in Quebec. Even the Bloc can be happy with Harris-Decima's numbers, and the Greens are looking good with 12%-13% in British Columbia.

But other polls haven't been so positive for the Liberals, or so negative for the New Democrats in Quebec. And while the results of the Harris-Decima and Nanos polls are within each's margin of error, the two stories they tell cannot both be true. Either the Tories are comfortably leading or they are not. Until other polls emerge to tell us which is the case, partisans of every stripe have something to gloat over.

28 comments:

That leaves me to believe the Nanos results, at least for the Prairies, need to be taken as an outlier in terms of the prairies. Though the Harris-Decima results in Ontario also seem a bit of an outlier...seems like a shaky and unpredictable political landscape right now.

Both pollsters are very well reknowned for their abilities to get accurate results - even if Nanos shows trend-busting results from time to time. Its curious to me that HD would show such odd results, usually they keep with the trends; so we're left with it either being HD correct, and the summar has allowed support to shift back to the Conservatives, and Nanos is once again going against the grain... or the opposite. Or hell, maybe both are wrong and the streets are running Liberal red right now.

One thing I will say though is that there is definite evidence for an NDP decline, or at the very least stagnation, over the summer. Neither poll really contradicts that claim, and both show a severe decline for the NDP in Quebec. I think there are definite elemennts of truth in these polls, we'll just need to wait for more companies to come out in order to see which nuggets aren't fools gold.

Yeah, there are a few things that both polls are indicating: all normal in BC and Atlantic, NDP down in Quebec, Bloc on verge between a couple and a dozen seats, Tories on 33-ish, Liberals on 24-ish. Question is whether the NDP are down (and Liberals up) in Prairies, Ontario, both, or neither. We'll just have to wait and see.

I don't loathe the Liberals, but there you go again with your ill-fated "once we elect the perfect leader we'll instantly rocket back to the glory we are inherently entitled to" attitude that has sunken the party to such abysmal depths. Btw, are you really saying that over 60% of Canadians are insane?

The Liberals have been in pretty steady decline since the Reform-PC merger. Honestly, the only leader they've had who has arrested that decline at all was Dion. Compared to Martin and Ignatieff, Dion actually maintained more of the support he inherited from his predecessor.

I personally think a lot of the decline had to do with a crappy leadership selection process that encouraged backstabbing and undermining of the sitting leader. Thankfully it's been changed to a vote of members, so we'll see how this round works out.

Another reason why those leaders are unsuccessful is because the Tories keep releasing those personal smear attack-ads on them. The Tories have completely ruined Dion and Ignatieff's political careers, I hope they are proud of what they did.

These two polls are so far apart it is difficult to see how either can be taken seriously - especially during the Summer doldrums. Also, I always keep coming back, when appropriate, to the impact of provincial elections on federal results. Given the election in Quebec, I would expect the results for the Liberals and the Bloc to be exaggerated and the support for the NDP to be quite a bit lower. Now that the provincial election is over in Quebec and Parliament is back in session in Ottawa, I would expect the numbers for the Libs and BQ to go down and the numbers for the NDP to go back up.

The thing is, the polls were more or less stable all through the summer - until these last two (and really, only the Harris-Decima poll is truly at odds). Obviously, wait and see, but with a good chunk of salty skepticism...

COMMENT MODERATION POLICY - Please be respectful when commenting. If choosing to remain anonymous, please sign your comment with some sort of pseudonym to avoid confusion. Please do not use any derogatory terms for fellow commenters, parties, or politicians. Inflammatory and overly partisan comments will not be posted. PLEASE KEEP DISCUSSION ON TOPIC.

Details on the methodology of the poll aggregation and seat projections are available here and here. Methodology for the forecasting model used during election campaigns is available here.

Projections on this site are subject to the margins of error of the opinion polls included in the model, as well as the unpredictable nature of politics at the riding level. The degree of uncertainty in the projections is also reflected by the projections' high and low ranges, when noted.

ThreeHundredEight.com is a non-partisan site and is committed to reporting on polls responsibly.